


The Pact

by FourSeasons



Series: Oneshots 2020-2021 [3]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Dragons, Family Fluff, Friendship, Heist, Light Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-16
Updated: 2021-01-16
Packaged: 2021-03-13 23:02:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28786131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FourSeasons/pseuds/FourSeasons
Summary: Fleur is not a monster. Ron is the one responsible for making sure that she doesn't become one.
Relationships: Fleur Delacour & Ron Weasley, Fleur Delacour/Bill Weasley
Series: Oneshots 2020-2021 [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1982503
Kudos: 2





	The Pact

**Author's Note:**

> IWSC Season 3: Round 1
> 
> Story Title/Link: The Pact
> 
> School and Theme: Beauxbatons: Heart's Desire
> 
> Special Rule: Create an object of worship
> 
> Mandatory Prompt: 10 [Pairing – platonic] Ron Weasley/Fleur Delacour
> 
> Additional Prompt(s): 3 [Dialogue] "How do you expect me to find a dragon hidden by a Disillusionment Charm?"; 11[Plot point] Illegal dragon breeding
> 
> Year: 2
> 
> Word count: 2850
> 
> A/N: Thank you, everyone, over at the IWSC Beauxbatons server who read this story multiple times and helped with the beta and edits needed.

"I love you, I love this family. I am not going to become a monster," Fleur whispered as if trying to convince herself of it — that she really did love being a Weasley.

They were in a hotel room, just the two of them, and Fleur had not stopped murmuring under her breath and touching the braided hair around her wrist since they had arrived.

"You know, you don't have to do this if you don't want to," Ron said. "If you're more comfortable waiting to team up with Bill, I'm sure—"

"Stop."

Ron stopped at once. His ears flushed a bright red, and Fleur's eyes softened.

She pulled Ron into a hug and tried to express how sorry she was for making him feel so small. "I am doing this, and I am doing this with you. So you're going to be helpful." She opened the folder Percy had given them that afternoon.

Ron moved closer to take a look at the maps and the single piece of paper with the mission brief and legal information printed on it. While Fleur and Ron would have never been each other's first pick, their expertise was probably the most compatible for the task. Fleur had experience working with runes in nature, and Ron was the only one with an authorised arrest permit.

Fleur took out a sleeve of highlighters from her bag, a lovely invention that Hermione had pushed on her when she noticed that Fleur seemed to colour-code her curse-breaker notes.

"This is the route that the breeders are most likely going to take," she said, highlighting the route in bright yellow. "Bill, Viktor, and Angie will be set up along that side of the mountain. Hermione will be working base camp at that point." She carefully circled Hermione's position.

Ron scanned the points Fleur had dotted on the map. There were still large expanses of the mountain that they couldn't access. "That still doesn't give us a safe point to extract Charlie, which is what we need to focus on. Especially with just the two of us. You know Charlie isn't going to come out without freeing those dragons."

Yes, the dragons. The reason Charlie had gone off the grid for a year, only to send an encrypted message to Shell Cottage three days ago. Percy had nearly lost his mind trying to get permits for everyone to get to Romania without causing an intergovernmental scandal. Percy hadn't slept much in the year Charlie had been away, fearful of losing another brother to violence.

"Do you know why I picked you to come with me?" Fleur asked.

Ron stopped trying to trace new escape routes only to find Fleur's brilliant blue eyes pinning him down. "Why? I'm not usually anyone's first pick." While most people would tell him off for that self-deprecating statement, he knew Fleur wouldn't. She usually wasn't anyone's first pick either.

"Because I'm going to count on you to hold me back when we get there. For me not to brutally harm or kill them."

"Kill them?" Ron asked, shock colouring his voice.

He knew Fleur was smart and dangerous. She had been a Triwizard champion, and it was part of her job description. But he had never known her to express the thought of killing someone. Not like this anyway, not coldly.

"Bill knows this, but I suppose he hasn't told you. He is loyal to a fault like that." She stood and poured coffee into two mugs. "My grand-mère was rescued from this exact same group of people. This was back when it was okay to treat Veelas like animals — to treat us like animals. Although I'm sure some people could still use a reminder that it isn't okay."

Fleur didn't look at Ron as she continued to describe moments he had read about due to Hermione's persistent nagging. Creature breeding groups like this one weren't an unusual part of wizarding history. However, it still jarred Fleur to think anyone would treat someone with so little humanity. Veelas weren't like werewolves, and while that was an unfair comparison, her vocabulary didn't stretch far enough to come up with another argument. Veelas were beautiful but led mostly tragic lives — tragedies rarely caused by their hands.

Ron usually didn't spend his time thinking about things that weren't in his control. This should've been one of those things. But it was difficult to distance himself from Fleur's distress because there was no objective way to look at it. Wizards were horrible to those whom they deemed to be beneath them, and anyone who had a "creature" classification (at some point in their history) knew this.

"Monsters." Fleur spat the word, as if desperately seeking for another but settling — merely settling — for this one.

Ron tried not to show fear. But that Veela side, the ugly one that Fleur hid so well, had started to come out. Her face distorted into something more avian, and her hands emitted smoke.

Fleur knew that she was scaring Ron and needed to calm down. A sip of, now cold, coffee and a minute of silence. Ron didn't need her wrath, and if she was to make him responsible for her actions, it would be wise for him not to fear her.

"So, your wand?" he asked and immediately regretted his question.

The silence between them stretched longer this time. "The wandmaker had gotten it from her long before I knew her."

Ron gulped. It was too painful to even think about.

"When we found my grand-mère, I was eight. I will never forget the day my maman brought her back. She had no hair on her head, and this bracelet was the last thing she gave to me."

Around Fleur's wrist was a braid of thick silver-blonde hair. Ron had heard about hoarding Veela hair before. Many believed that it had magical properties. It was a theory that made sense considering how many wands used Veela hair as part of their core. However, he had never really known anyone apart from Fleur who believed in it.

"What does it do?" he asked.

Ron watched as Fleur took a deep, shuddering breath. He knew that for her, to speak her truth was an action that felt physical and vulnerable. Although Ron was the one whom she was closest to in the family, this part of her, the heritage that she never really revealed to the rest of the world, wasn't a piece of herself for everyone else. There were a lot of good reasons to keep her Veela heritage covered, this braid of hair around her wrist was probably the only part she refused to hide.

"We believe — I believe — that when a Veela dies, they become a god. To have the hair of a god with you at all times is the ultimate protection a Veela can get. It allows you direct access to divinity."

"So ancestral protection—"

"No! Ancestors are not gods." Fleur gave Ron such a dirty look. "To imply such would be blasphemous."

Somehow a lot of things fell into place in Ron's mind at that moment. "That's why the Death Eaters had no idea how to get to Shell Cottage." He sat down at the table, his ears still red and his hands trembling. Just what was Fleur capable of?

Fleur looked around the room and said nothing; instead, she pushed the maps towards Ron. They had planning to do, and he had to make sure the mission wouldn't end in death on either side. He was responsible for not allowing Fleur to become a monster.

That night, they gathered at the bottom of the mountain. Hermione sat in the centre of the chaos, taking account of inventory and keeping Harry (who needed to stay home with a very sick Teddy) informed. They had to travel light in order to move quickly, and the mountain range reacted weirdly to magic. It was probably a safety measure created by the breeders. Dragons were notoriously cranky and the simplest infraction was bound to set a dragon off if misinterpreted.

"How do you expect me to find a dragon hidden by a Disillusionment Charm?" Viktor growled as bright spots popped up on the map, revealing dragons that the naked eye could not see. Charlie had warned them that this was how he was setting most of the dragons free.

Ron opened his mouth to retort that Vitkor's group had the relatively easy role of removing the charm and documenting which dragons had been released.

Although they were all tense, Viktor's outburst caused them all to giggle. He had probably never met anyone with Charlie's level of eccentricity, and dragons under a Disillusionment Charm screamed Charlie's handiwork. Viktor shook his head once more before heading into the night, Bill and Angelina following him.

Phase one of the plan had already been set up. The best fliers of the group dotted different paths of the mountain on brooms. Fleur had kissed Bill hard before he left. While every mission held some kind of danger, there was something personal about this one. Bill's eyes settled on Ron before he mounted his broom. Fleur must've told Bill about the responsibility she had placed on Ron.

Percy was wringing his hands in a corner, a pile of first-aid healing equipment next to him — for both dragons and humans. The likelihood was high that they would need it, but it still drove Percy into a worry that it wouldn't be enough. Charlie's message had said very little. Ron knew what his brother was thinking, but until they completed the extraction, they would have to calm their minds. It wasn't a good idea to think of the worst-case scenario so early.

"Are you sure you can keep control?" Ron asked.

Fleur nodded. She would never allow herself to be forced into a box by anyone. She had seen what it had done to her grandmother.

Although her faith considered her grandmother to be a god, she wondered what god would allow humans to use them so terribly. But that didn't stop her from checking whether the braid of hair still clung to her wrist.

For better or worse, the Weasleys were part of her family, and all she desired was their happiness and safety. If believing was the thing that helped their cause, then she would believe.

"Three minutes," Hermione called out as the Galleon in her palm burned. Ron pressed a hand against her shoulder, saying goodbye without breaking Hermione's concentration.

Ron gave Fleur a nod, and, with him on his broom and her on a Thestral, they began their ascent. The higher they climbed, the colder it got. The air thinned, and Ron found his chest heaving, his lungs gulping air at a rapid pace.

"Slow down!" Fleur screamed. "Deep, intentional breaths." When she saw that Ron wasn't calming down, she moved her Thestral closer and tapped her wand gently against his head. The Bubblehead Charm was not a long-term solution, but it gave Ron a moment to take control of his fear. "Calm down. I'll start the wandwork."

Fleur had her wand out and began mumbling a set of spells that they had agreed on. Ron took his focus off her for a moment and began doing the same. The rocks in the mountain had been carved with crude runes in an attempt to disorientate those who wanted to access the multiple caves. The mountain itself was set out like a puzzle, and if Ron was good at one thing, it was puzzles.

Sweat poured down Fleur's face as she made increasingly complicated wand movements in order to break some of the protections. They had surpassed Ron's area of expertise a few minutes ago, and it felt like they had made only the smallest step in the name of progress. Ron was surprised when the charms around the mountain began melting away. He had expected the resistance to last longer. Fleur wasn't joking about letting whoever was breeding the dragons know that they would be met with serious magic.

"You get Charlie," she yelled, before guiding her Thestral to land at what they assumed was the entrance.

Ron couldn't tell whether she was being fearless or had actually lost all sense of sanity. Bill had warned him of the almost-dogged focus that Fleur had when she took on a task. It made her a good Curse-Breaker but not an easy person to get to know.

"No, you get Charlie," Ron said when he landed next to her. "I'm the one with the arrest permits."

Fleur rolled her eyes, ignoring how bird-like her features had become in the last five minutes. This was a rescue mission, not a search-and-destroy.

Ron had seen a lot of different parts of Fleur. He had seen her sing really bad karaoke at bars and weaponize her looks. He had watched her go from a girl who was playing at being a woman to an actual woman, and then he had watched her pursue love. Fleur was one of the few people who saw Ron before seeing the million other things the world chose to define him by. His only responsibility was to make sure that revenge didn't consume her. Not when she had specifically asked him to keep her in check.

Fleur nodded at the change of plans. She stomped off, muttering about inequality and insolent little boys under her breath as she made her way to where they suspected Charlie was held. Ron felt his ears glow red and had to remind himself that Fleur's anger wasn't a personal attack.

Caves. Fleur hated caves. Give her an old Parisian catacomb any day. She got off her Thestral and waited for her eyes to adjust to the darkness. A movement behind her warranted a Stunning Spell, and she crept further into the cave. It sickened her to see how homey the set-up looked.

A quick Lumos had the place filled with light, and Fleur touched her bracelet and let the anger consume her once more. There was no need to go unprepared if there was a possibility for a fight. A roar echoed throughout the cave system that sent Fleur running towards it. Dragons meant Charlie was close, and she trusted that Charlie knew what he was doing when it came to dragons.

Her boots hit the stones, and the air around her had quickly become hot and muggy. A pair of flapping wings seemed to come her way, and although every instinct screamed at her to run in the opposite direction, she kept going towards the sounds.

Ron quickly joined her, coming in from the left and avoiding the fireball that appeared from her palms.

"Veela hair; actual god powers," Fleur whispered. When Ron looked at her, puzzled, she lifted up her hand with the bracelet. The strand of hair looked more like molten gold than usual and Ron figured it was best not to ask more questions.

They turned the corner and kept sprinting towards the noise, only to hear a yell from behind them. Fleur turned to launch a fireball, but Ron grabbed her hands to divert the flames from frying Charlie's face.

Charlie waved cheerily from the rock formation he was sitting on. Fleur noticed a neat stack of wands in Charlie's left hand and a very angry Norwegian Ridgeback cornering what must have been the illegal breeders.

Charlie looked way too excited, and he jumped down from the rocks to examine Fleur's face. It was still caught in the bird-like state that came through when Veelas felt endangered.

"You should use that more often," Charlie stated, avoiding the punch Fleur aimed towards his arm. "It looks so cool."

Fleur rolled her eyes. How she delighted in being a Weasley.

That night, no one got their revenge. It was an anti-climactic end to their day. Maybe Fleur's grandmother had protected them. The illegal breeders, for all their bravado, clearly had underestimated what an angry Charlie was capable of. Charlie had done all the work for them and was impatiently waiting to get off the mountain and check on the dragons.

As they carefully made their way down the mountain, Fleur flew close to Ron. He hadn't let her or Charlie even look in the breeders' direction. Both Charlie and Fleur thought it was stupid that Ron had decided to protect people who clearly deserved to die. Ron stayed firm in his decision; he became an Auror because he did believe in justice and, although Charlie and Fleur had been hurt by the breeders' actions, it was not their place to judge.

Overall, the hard part was over, and Ministry bureaucracy was Percy's area of expertise.

"Thank you for not letting me become a monster," Fleur said over the noise of celebration that accompanied a successful mission. Charlie had already become the centre of attention and was loving every minute of it.

Ron shrugged, embarrassed at how formal Fleur made the words feel. "You're my friend. Friends don't let their friends see themselves as monsters."


End file.
